Garbage respond to photographer’s open letter after he refuses free use of his photos

Pat Pope had previously written a public response to the band's request

Garbage have written an open letter to a photographer who has denied them the free use of his photos.

The band had contacted photographer Pat Pope to request use of some of his photos of the group for a new book they are planning to release.

Pope wrote an open letter to the band last week, in which he said a member of their management team had emailed him requesting use of some photos he had taken of the group but had explained there would be no fee for the usage.

“It also says that in return for the use of my photos you will give me a “proper credit” but that given it is planned to be a self release the budget is “financially limited”, by which your management company mean “we’re not going to pay you”, wrote Pope.

In it, the band say they had already paid Pope for the shoot in 1995, and “didn’t expect such a hostile reception to our enquiry.” They went on to explain that the book is “not intended as a profit generating venture but something beautiful to create and present directly to our fans as a celebration of our music and the image-makers who we have been lucky enough to work with over the span of a twenty-year career.”

They continued: “We very quickly and painfully learned that without a book publisher to help offset costs, we are not in the financial position to afford to pay for the usage of every photograph we were hoping to include in the book.”

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Before signing off as “Shirley, Butch, Duke and Steve”, they closed by stating: “Obviously we assess every request based on its own individual merits but we would never publicly admonish or begrudge a fellow artist for merely asking.”
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